We are grateful for law enforcement officials and for the brave victims who spoke up. Poland has largely ignored the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in many European and Western nations. We take this as an encouraging sign that officials in Poland are ready to start taking this crisis seriously.

We hope that those who were hurt or witnessed child sexual crimes will be encouraged by this arrest to speak up. We also want church officials in Poland and the Caribbean to reach out to any other possible victims.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 25 years and have more than 15,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)